


You Stop, but I'll Falter

by thistidalwave



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-18
Updated: 2011-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-24 18:28:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistidalwave/pseuds/thistidalwave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The summer is remembered by slushies and the absence of loneliness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Stop, but I'll Falter

Despite knowing each other since Rachel had been the bossy kid who stuck gold stars and glitter on all the toys in preschool and Artie had been the quiet kid whose glasses kept falling down his nose (causing Rachel to insist he push them back up), Artie Abrams and Rachel Berry have very few things in common.

They sat next to each other in most classes in elementary and junior high school, not just because of alphabetical order, but also because Artie was the only kid who didn’t constantly complain about how annoying Rachel was (and also didn’t constantly cheat off her).

They are both intelligent, they both know what it is like to be slushied, and they both love to sing. (Rachel would insist that Artie’s love of performance had been borne from her influence. He would disagree.)

They were both a part of the original six New Directions, and they both have a love of argyle.

But the similarities between Artie and Rachel, for the most part, end there.

\---

“Interesting drink selection,” a familiar voice declares from above Artie’s head on the first official day off from school after ninth grade. He fights an urge to groan. “Not one I would have made myself or expected from you.”

Artie lets the lever on the slushie machine snap back into place and looks up at Rachel. “I’ve never had green apple thrown at my face, have you?” he asks coolly, wheeling backward toward the straws.

Rachel watches him fit a lid onto his cup with an almost confused expression on her face. She turns to look at the array of slushie flavours. Artie had been planning on paying for his slush and getting out of there (and away from Rachel, who he is slightly afraid might somehow coerce him into singing some sort of show tune) as quickly as possible, but he finds himself watching her reach for a cup instead.

She fills the cup with a brown slush--it’s either Pepsi or Coke, but Artie isn’t sure which because he’s a bit distracted by the rather frightening determined expression on her face. After putting a lid on the cup, she stalks over to the counter to pay, Artie wheeling himself after her.

It isn’t until they had both emerged from the air conditioned convenience store into the sweltering heat that Rachel actually looks at her slush, then at Artie. “I had intended to buy myself some refreshing water,” she says. “Slushies are certainly not worth the heaps of refined sugar dumped into a bit of ice.”

Artie smirks. “Kind of feels a bit like sticking it to the man, hey?”

Rachel’s cheeks flush pink. She takes a sip of her slush and nods.

\---

Artie isn’t sure who he had expected to be on the other end of the line when he pauses his game of Halo in order to pick up the ringing house phone at ten in the morning, but it hadn’t been Rachel.

“Who dis be?”

“Is this the Abrams household?”

“This is Artie.”

“Oh, perfect. This is Rachel Berry calling.”

“I know. Why?” Rachel doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Artie can hear something that sounds like something bumping against a wall in the background. “Did you fall over?” he asks.

“No, I’m fine,” Rachel says. “I was wondering if you were particularly busy today, and if not, if you would like to, perhaps...”

“Hang out?” Artie fills in for her.

“Yes, I suppose, though I don’t think--”

“Are you any good at video games?” he interrupts.

\---

As it turns out, Rachel isn’t terrible at video games once Artie teaches her the basics. She isn’t really into the whole first person shooter thing, though, so he switches it to Mario.

Then she sort of starts kicking his ass without realizing it, so he shuts it off before she can clue in and asks if she’s hungry.

“I suppose I am,” she allows hesitantly, placing her controller carefully on the coffee table.

“Okay, cool. I’m pretty sure there’s food somewhere in the house. In the kitchen or somewhere.”

“Are you inviting me to stay for lunch?” Rachel asks.

Artie blinks at her. “Sure, yeah. You only got here, what, forty minutes ago? I’m not just going to make you leave.”

Rachel grins at him.

Twenty minutes after that, she’s deemed practically everything he’s suggested (mainly stick-it-in-the-microwave type deal affairs) entirely inedible and is frying something involving entirely too many vegetables on the stove. Artie is under strict orders to stay in the dining room. (“If you roll one inch of your wheel over that threshold, I will know about it, Abrams.”)

It’s quite the turn around from the girl who was skeptical that she’d even be invited to stay to eat.

She glances over at him. “Where do you keep the salt?”

“There’s some out here,” he says, picking up the shaker and holding it up. She puts down the cooking utensil that Artie doesn’t know the name of and takes the salt from him, smiling. He smiles back and the hint of nervousness that had been on her face disappears.

Rachel’s pretty good at cooking.

Even if there are too many vegetables.

\---

Rachel starts showing up at Artie’s house regularly. He doesn’t mind too much, mostly because of the food. (He doesn’t consider that she actually is kind of fun to hang out with.)

He tries to convince her that it’s a better idea to show up later rather than earlier, something that he doesn’t really have much success with until she arrives at about 9:30 one morning and he’s still dead asleep with no intent of getting up for a solid few hours, no matter how many times she pokes his shoulder. (He’d stayed up playing video games until at least 3:30.) Even that has minimal effect--he wakes up later to pancakes. It’s kind of (read: super) nice.

The only real issue Artie and Rachel have is what to watch on TV. When he rolls into the living room after cleaning up after lunch (his job, since she cooks) one day early on in the summer, she’s watching something that he can’t really make out with a blank look on her face. He assumes she’s not _really_ watching, so he grabs the remote and flips it to the baseball game.

Rachel immediately turns to him and glares, taking the remote back. “I was watching that!” she protests, turning the channel back.

Artie watches the screen for a minute, trying to figure out what it is, when suddenly a high pitched noise comes from the set and it clicks. “Is this _opera_?”

“ _Shhh_ ,” is Rachel’s only response. Artie takes it as an affirmative and stares from her to the screen in horror.

He (wisely) waits until the excess noise stops before he calmly says “Rachel, you know I don’t really want you to use my TV to watch opera, right?”

She looks at him, her eyes a bit wide. “Opera is very edu--”

“It’s summer,” Artie interrupts, taking the remote gently from her hand. “And I like baseball.” He flips the channel.

Rachel stares at him, then at the TV. She pouts. Artie pretends he doesn’t notice.

In the end, they generally work around this issue by Artie letting Rachel watch opera until he’s done cleaning, Rachel letting Artie watch baseball until he throws something (usually the remote), and then both watching a movie they agree on.

\---

Normally Rachel only comes over in the daytime, citing the emptiness of her house due to her fathers being away at work as lonely. (Artie doesn’t say it, but he figures that he’d be bored and lonely without Rachel to hang out with, too.)

A few days before school is due to start again, however, she shows up at his door around 8:30 PM, brown slush in one hand and a green apple slush, which he takes from her, in the other.

They go to a nearby playground and sit at the top of a grassy hill, watching the sun go down as they drink their slushies. The streaks of pink and orange splashed across the sky slowly recede and fade into purple, then dark blue. By the time Artie spots a star peeking out of the night sky, his slushie long finished, Rachel has pulled out an iPod and is fiddling with the earphones of it.

“What are you listening to?” he asks, finally breaking their silence.

She looks up at him. “It’s actually your iPod.” He can just barely see that her cheeks have flushed a tiny bit. “I took it from your room a few weeks back.”

Artie hadn’t even noticed. He tells her this, which makes her laugh.

“I especially like this song,” she tells him, holding out an earbud to him. The cord doesn’t quite reach them both with her sitting, so she stands. She looks awkward standing there with his iPod, so he gestures for her to sit down in his lap. Rachel looks confused, so he grabs the sleeve of her tacky sweater and pulls her closer, patting his thigh. She gets the idea and settles herself down.

He can see the screen now and watches as she scrolls through his sparse collection of hip hop and rap, with the occasional pop song mixed in. He wonders why exactly she borrowed his iPod for so long--it doesn’t seem like she’d be all that into his style of music. (This is the girl that watches opera every day. He still doesn’t know how she found that on his TV. He doesn’t really want to.)

She seems to find the song and hits play. Artie’s right ear is filled with some dude asking what he gets for ten dollars. Before Artie can hear the answer, Rachel hits pause. “That is _not_ the right song, sorry,” she says.

(He hadn’t really thought she’d like a song with the word ‘horny’ in the title, but she surprises him daily.)

When she hits play again, the beat is slower and more techno than he would expect from himself. He squints at the screen, but it goes dark before he can read it. It’s not a bad song, though.

“I like the part about life being magic when we were younger,” Rachel says, leaning her head against Artie’s shoulder. “And worrying for hours anyway. I do that.”

Artie doesn’t say anything. He just reaches up and smooths down a section of her hair. She closes her eyes.

(Later, when Artie looks up the lyrics, he’ll think that maybe she was telling him something. He doesn’t really understand what, though.)

\---

Despite an entire summer of similarities, nothing really changes between Rachel and Artie once school starts again.

They’re both slushied on the first day of school. Rachel gets hit with a green apple one, and when Artie sees this he sighs for all the green apple slushies he’ll never drink now.

When he wheels past the sign up sheet for New Directions, he thinks of Rachel watching opera because it’s educational, singing under her breath while cooking, singing out loud and proud while standing on top of the coffee table (this had actually happened, to his astonishment, more than once), and leaning her head into his shoulder while someone else sang, and he gets the first person he sees signing up to write his name on it for him.

\---

 _What’s the connection?  
Some of us sing, some of us fall in love.  
But when I need it, you bring me things, I always knew that you would._


End file.
